Keynote address I: Tensegrity engineering: Integrating the design of structure, control, and signal processing

Abstract

It is well-known that the various disciplines that design the individual components of the final system are not coordinated, except in an ad hoc way. This paper takes some steps toward the formal integration of Structure, Control, and Signal Processing designs. To integrate structure and control we employ the tensegrity structural paradigm. To integrate signal processing and control we employ the new work called Information Architecture, where the precisions and locations of all sensors and actuators are coordinated with the control design, which are all dictated by the closed loop performance requirements, including a cost constraint on the hardware. We assume that sensor or actuator costs are proportional to the precision of the instrument. The design constraints are: i) the cost of all sensors and actuators must be less than a specified budget, $, ii) the control energy must satisfy a specified upper-bound, U, iii) the closed loop performance must satisfy a specified covariance upper-bound, Y, of the output error, iv) adjustable parameters of the structure are coordinated with the joint structure/control design to achieve the required performance bounds, Y. Given a hardware budget $, and performance budgets U and Y, the paper shows what performance (Y) is achievable for a fixed cost $ and a fixed energy budget U. Alternatively, for a fixed performance and energy budget (Y, U) the paper shows the minimum hardware costs $ required to achieve this performance.